Nordic Region
Four new Nordic labour ministers – and their challenges
In 2022, both Norway, Sweden and Denmark got new labour ministers. Here is your chance to get to know them better.
Nordics, Nato and the neighbourhood
The Nordic Council is 70 this year, which was of course celebrated during its annual session in Helsinki. The Council President Erkki Tuomioja pointed out that parliamentarians cooperated for twenty years before the ministers got involved. In this edition, we take a closer look at the Nordic cooperation.
Nordic cooperation spans everyday and fateful issues
“The Nordic Council deals with everyday issues of concern to the Nordic citizens,” Erkki Tuomioja told the media just before opening the 74th session in Helsinki on 1 November in his role as the Council President. Yet never before has a session been so dominated by big, existential issues.
27 years since the last changes: Time to revise the Helsinki Treaty?
During its meeting in Helsinki in early November, the Nordic Council decided to call on the Nordic governments to start a “joint discussion with the Nordic Council about how the Nordic countries can better anchor the Nordic cooperation.” Or in other words: revise the Helsinki Treaty.
The labour ministers consider collective agreements' position in the Nordics
The Nordic governments should introduce a new kind of support where employers who sign up to collective agreements pay lower employer taxes for their employees. That was what Fafo researcher Jon Erik Dølvik proposed when he presented a report about collective agreements in the Nordics during the Nordic labour ministers’ meeting.
Karen Ellemann new NCM Secretary General
Karen Ellemann is the next Secretary General of the Nordic Council of Ministers. She is seen as a heavy-weight candidate taking up a central post for the Nordic cooperation.
Nordic trade unions “too distant from rest of EU”
Who gains the most out of being a fly on the wall at the Council of Nordic Trade Unions congress in Oslo – the journalist or the social anthropologist? I suspect the latter, but since I am a journalist I will present the big news first: Iceland will host a tripartite meeting on green and just reform on 1 December 2023.
Finland extends parental leave
Three Nordic countries have recently made changes to parental leave. Iceland increased the leave for both parents to six months in 2021, while Denmark and Finland made changes this summer.
Nordic focus on new jobs without discrimination
Upskilling and gender equality will be central to the Nordic countries’ labour market cooperation in the coming years.
Social sustainability under pressure from many sides
Street battles in Sweden between people from disadvantaged areas and the police have less to do with a Danish politician wanting to burn the Koran and more to do with a lack of social glue between different groups.
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